Of that much agitated text of Irenæus's Epistle to Victor Ch. vi. In what regard the forty days of the Quadragesima were of Ch. vii. An answer to the objections of the Presbyterians from pre- tence of some ancient Ecclesiastical writers, in the 65th, 66th, and 67th pages of their Grand Debate in 4to. Ch. viii. An answer to the other objections of the Presbyterians, and to their pretence from an Act of Parliament Ch. ix. The Judgment which the ancient Fathers made of such as 294 Ch. x. Andrewes bishop of Winchester, and John Cosin the present lord bishop of Durham; also, in some measure, ΤΟ HIS MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY OUR SOVEREIGN LORD CHARLES THE SECOND, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY MONARCH OF MOST GRACIOUS AND DREAD SOVEREIGN, THE subject matter of this discourse, the holy Fast of Lent before Easter, which hath always been a sacred solemnity of your royal court, and hath for nineteen years (one whole cycle of those solemnities) been driven hence together with your Majesty, and at length by the blessed hand of God together with your sacred Majesty restored unto us, was forthwith by your pious care in its first periodical return owned in your royal proclamation and example the last year, and by your meanest subject and servant maintained in a discourse preached before your Majesty. But the same observance of Lent was forthwith in the same week, by a nameless and false pamphlet scattered at the very gates of your court, maligned and opposed; and became soon after matter of deliberate contest and debate, as part of that which was thought fit to be excepted to in the public Liturgy or Common Prayer Book, and propounded by some to be altered. The depending of which debate and controversy, and the employment, which by your Majesty's gracious commission I had part in, to consider of that, with many At the Savoy. other particulars in the Common Prayer Book, and the expectation of the utmost which could be brought against that primitive and religious fast, which lately now we have received in print; hath necessitated this discourse (delivered at first in a sermon in your royal chapel, and by your Majesty commanded to be published, and by the warrant of your permission since enlarged) to choose rather to expect the beginning of this Lent, than to appear at the ending only of the former. It now, not unseasonably, as I hope, presents itself to your sacred hands, and flies to your royal protection, who are most truly the defender of that holy faith whereof this and other solemnities of the Church are the fence and mound. The royal Constantine, in whom first God did most eminently fulfil His holy promise of giving to His Church kings to be her nursing fathers, began that course with which your sacred Majesty set forth; writing unto all the Churches in his empire, and that undoubtedly from the advice of the first and most sacred Ecumenical Council of Nice, then sitting, for the religious and uniform observation of the holy feast of Easter with the appointed fasts that precede it. In which his imperial letters he did instruct the Churches of his empire, "that this holy solemnity of Pasch, as comprising both the feast and fast, had from the very first day itself wherein our Lord did suffer upon the cross, been in the Church ever observed unto that present year;" and for the years following, no adversary will or can deny it to have continued. How after that example your Majesty's own royal ancestors have even in ancient ages preserved here and transmitted to posterity this holy feast and fast, is in part shewn in the following treatise; and the ages to come shall not be silent of your Majesty's princely piety herein. What Athenagoras, a primitive apologist for • Ωρισμένας νηστείας he calls them. Euseb. lib. de Vit. Constantin. c. 16, 17, 18. [vol. i. p. 586.] Theodoret. lib. i. c. 9. [vol. iii. p. 771.] Socrates, lib. i. c. 9. [p. 33.] |